Owts, Nowts and Summats: Writing Authentic Dialogue

Okay, I don’t talk posh. I’m not posh. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never talk like Princess Ann, but I can write using the Queen’s English when I need to. My dissertation at Uni wasn’t peppered with owts, nowts and summats.

The setting for my novel-in-progress is about working class teenage life in a northern town. It’s about kids who are growing up on a rough council estate, as I did. Without wanting to stereotype, I think it’s fair to say that the speech of people from a regional working-class background is often far from ‘Received Pronunciation’. How can I use dialogue in my novel to reflect this, without distracting readers from the story by drawing attention to the speech?

Some writers use a lot of dialect and mispronunciations. Their diction might be more true-to-life, but I find it irritating. As a reader, I don’t like ploughing my way through a lot of this kind of dialogue. Others might feel it works for them.

In my writing, I try to signal the way my characters talk by occasionally using dialect but not over-using it. Of course, what is ‘over-use’ is a matter of opinion. For me, it’s a difficult balancing act between veracity and easily readable dialogue. I don’t know if I’ve got it quite right.

Pat Barker in her first novel, ‘Union Street’, a gritty realistic novel of the dark side of working class life, uses dialogue which I think is just brilliant. I’m going to re-read this novel and see what I can learn from it about how to write effective dialogue.

.

Thinking About Blogging

I’m thinking about blogging. Okay, thinking is not the same as doing but not doing is what has prompted me to think (if that makes sense?).

I started this blog full of the intention to post weekly, but I’m finding that sometimes life gets in the way. The past few weeks have been particularly busy for me with work (paid), work (unpaid) and various activities.

Training sessions for new volunteers at the mental health charity where I work are now in full swing, and I help with these. It’s very time-consuming but I love doing it. Never before in my life have I had a more interesting, fulfilling job.

I won a Speech Contest at my local ASC (Association of Speakers Clubs) branch. Here is a photo of my award to prove it! This has led to my entry into the Area Speech Contest to take place at Addingham Hall this Saturday (help!). So I’m busy at the moment in preparation for that. I’ve just had a go at doing my speech for Saturday on video camera to see what I look like in action. OMG! Think it’s a case of – Jean tries hard but needs more practice.

Meanwhile, I’ve been re-writing the first few chapters of my novel-in-progress. Will I ever be satisfied with this? I’ve also been busy preparing and delivering a teaching session to AMHP students at Bradford University – and doing loads of other stuff, which all seem to have come up to demand my attention at around the same time.

And I know that all this sounds like making feeble excuses while other bloggers with busier lives than mine keep up their regular posts. But I figure that occasional posts for a while are better than none, and I do intend to resume the weekly posts soon.